What’s new about new media?

Old media such as books, newspapers, magazines, television, radio, recordings and movies remain, but they have all evolved in terms of ownership trends, message packaging and audience consumption patterns. When new media is introduced into society its place and functions are unknown but rather are shaped and modeled by adaption to the new medium and by the existing habits of media use. Media therefore can be looked at as a socially realized structure of communication. A key feature or characteristic of new media is digitality. Digitality is used to mean the condition of living in a digital culture. Aspects of digitality include near continuous contact with other people through cell phones, near instantaneous look up of information through the World Wide Web on search engines such as Google, and as well as communicating through weblogs and email. Mass media plays a crucial role in forming and reflecting public opinion, connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society. New media is a much bigger stage than that of old media as it has a much larger audience member. Television broadcasting has a large amount of control over the content society watches and the times in which it is viewed. This distinguishing feature of traditional media, which new media have challenged by altering the participation habits of the public. The internet creates a space for more diverse political opinions, social and cultural viewpoints and a heightened level of consumer participation.

New media has changed the way in which we communicate, communication is no longer one way… The fact that we now have the need to create new words is a clear indicator that things are new. For instance the term ‘multimedia message service’ (MMS) did not exist until the emergence of new media such as mobile phones. New media affects the way we speak or chose to communicate to others for example when using instant messaging mediums such as msn, Skype or even text messages everything is shortened. The fact that the media has had this drastic social change on communities shows the level of influence and power it has, and the fact that old media could not do this makes this media new. When we look at old media such as broadcast, audience members had to attend to the same message at the same time because of programming schedules determined by the industry. However this is no longer the case as the audience can choose when, where and how to attend to a message using the Internet on news websites, and podcast. With old media one could send letters to  the editor and could have their own public access television show, but for the average media consumer, there was no real chance of being heard before New Media.

Another feature that makes new media new is the time compression. For example with old media when editing say magazines, editors would spend a month doing the work it takes to put out the publication and then wait for printing and shipping before anyone could even read the work. Today new media compresses that time spent and all the work can be done in half the time or less.

New media now structures that the way we engage daily with the world at large. Being able to be heard quickly by people who are communicating with you is what sets New Media apart.